Mom who works three jobs to pay her daughter’s medical bills loses $40,000 to vicious scam: Check out the text messages anyone could fall for
- Mother of three from Melbourne has run out of savings
- She needed the money for her daughters’ treatments
A devastated single mom has been conned out of the $40,000 she raised for her teenage daughters’ medical bills in an employment scam nightmare.
Leah Wilson, a consultant in Melbourne, had the money “drained” from her bank account after clicking links sent to her by a recruiter she believed to be.
It was Ms. Wilson’s second time involved in an online scam in less than a year after crucial personal information was stolen in the September 2022 Optus data breach.
Ms. Wilson recently applied for jobs online through the legitimate employment agency, Tradewind Australia, only to receive a text saying it had secured her part-time work.
Leah Wilson (left with daughters Grace and Maddie) had the money ‘drained’ from her bank account after clicking links sent to her by who she thought was a recruiter
Ms. Wilson recently applied for jobs online through the legitimate employment agency, Tradewind Australia, only to receive a text message (pictured) from scammers saying it secured her part-time work
All she had to do to get started was provide her phone number, follow some links and fill out a few forms to complete the process and start her new job.
But during the chat exchanges, she handed over private information that allowed hackers to access her bank account.
The cybercriminals “deducted” $40,000 from her bank account, largely consisting of $34,000 she had collected to pay medical bills for her daughters Maddie, 15, and Grace, 17 via GoFundMe.
“I’m not getting the money back,” she told Daily Mail Australia.
Ms Wilson added that being scammed ‘can really happen to anyone’.
“I feel really shocked at that [the money is] all gone,” she told 7News.
“We live on the cutting edge of a knife [financially] currently.’
Both of her daughters suffer from mental health issues and eating disorders, prompting the single mom to mortgage her home three times to cover the family’s skyrocketing health bill.
Mrs. Wilson also typically works three jobs to earn enough money for her family.
Tradewind Australia confirmed that ‘more than 100 people’ had reached out to say scammers had tried to impersonate the company.
A warning about the scheme is now posted on the company’s website.
Melbourne single mother Leah Wilson usually works three jobs to earn enough money for her family
Tradewind Australia’s website now contains a warning about the scheme
“We have recently been hit by a job and employment scam, where scammers impersonate our consultants via WhatsApp and SMS and attempt to obtain personal and financial information from individuals,” the warning reads.
Tradewind CEO George Richards said his company would “never ask for money for services” and urged job seekers to ignore such messages.
In 2022, cyber criminals used her driver’s license data to hack into her myGov account and then file false tax returns in her name.
Last year, according to ASIC, 31,700 bank customers were victims of scams.